Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Bullet diameter for big game?

I am still trying to figure out why anyone doing any kind of culling wouldn't want to consider CNS shots and the only thing that comes to mind Is either lack of shooting skills or BS.

Like I said, the speed with which a bullet kills has to get into the overkill range before it makes a difference unless you have an uncontrolled experiment and do not compare apples to apples. A bullet that provides penetration to do the work from any angle and provides the most reliable penetration in a straight line is the best.

If I have to kill a lot of them day in and day out I am going to shoot CNS and lay they down where they stand and be using a suppressed .223 or .243 with an accurate low power/low noise load. That's an accuracy game with bonus points for not disturbing the next in line and has little to do with a hunting situation.

I think you need experience in more than just rifle work.

I'll take that as a NO! Lol


Trystan

How bout bill butler pat?

Sometimes I believe the argument is not actually about "what diameter is fastest for killing game"? but more accurately "what amount of time after the hit is satisfactory to drop game"?

As I said earlier, I have been 100% satisfied with the results I have seen from 223s used by hunters on deer and antelope when good bullets were used. All died fast and all fell within short periods of time, some VERY short.
But I am not going to say the effects of a 3" diameter hole through the vitals are no different then one that is 3/4" in diameter. That's just silly.

So objective VS subjective comparison is never going to be settled for everyone.

Is a dump truck more powerful and able to carry a heavier loads then a Honda car? Yes. So ---------------does that make it better for getting groceries on Sunday? I think that is similar to the discussion when a question like "how big and heavy should a big-game bullet be"?

Both pronghorn does and American Bull Bison are classed as big game, as are both impala and elephant. So that is the first issue to draw down on.

Next is the issue I named above, how much time is "OK" for the game to drop after the hit?
None?
2 seconds?
10 seconds?
2 minutes?
30 minutes.

Archers often tell me they are happy with kills that take 3-4 minutes to fall and most any rifle shooter would be appalled if his ammo and gun gave an average of 4 minutes to drop his game.

So I am going to ask "would you want a gun that dropped every elk you ever shot in 1/4 second, no matter where it was hit forward of the guts? Such a weapon does exist, -----but they are hard to get out of Russia and China and hunting with RPGs is not legal anyway. And it will be hard on the meat.

I am happiest when my game falls instantly, but never unhappy when it falls under 5-6 seconds after the shot, ------------- unless it was charging me.

If an average "drop" in 3 seconds is "worse" then an average "drop" in 1/4 second they I'd plead guilty to using a "less then perfect weapon". But I doubt I'd throw it in the trash and go out to buy a 50 BMG necked down to 375 to be sure I can cut my deer nearly in half with every shot.

Somehow I don't see how that is better. In fact, I don't even see it as good.

Trystan, welcome to my ignore list.....seems you add nothing valuable to this forum.

You either totally missed the intention of the question, or I didn't state it well enough. When I said this......."Best = fastest killer in my book, as long as the bullet performs as it is designed. I"m not including rounds to the CNS either." I was trying to state that when arguing as to what bullet kills the quickest, I do not consider CNS shots because any bullet by virtually any cartridge would immediately knock a deer off it's feet. So don't consider CNS shots when stating which bullet killed the quickest.

I don't know how many deer and aoudad I've culled with CNS/head shots......a few dozen easily. All of the culling I've done gave me a good media to test bullets, and bullets were attempted to be placed in "normal" POI's such as behind the should, through the shoulder, etc. As I said, in my more limited (but almost identical) experiences as Mule Deer, deer/aoudad usually ran farther when hit with monos (the vast majority I used were the original Barnes X) than they did with leaded premiums and C&C's.

To the contrary I asked a legitimate question and you are the one who had nothing to offer


Trystan

Bill is a very good friend....

yes all cartridges kill deer ,but this happened to me twice : a 6x6 bull elk i killed with an arrow thru both lungs ran down the trail 200 yards so i waited 1 hour just in case ,i then followed a good blood trail about 150 yards 2 other bowhunters were gutting the bull and claimed it. another time it was a huge 9 pt. whitetail buck i knock it down at 100 yards with a 12 gauge slug it got up and walked 40 yards and drop over dead and another hunter claimed that buck ,both were on public land. so after that when i am rifle hunting i always carry a bigger rifle so animals don`t go any place but down when i shoot them , i only shoot bigger bucks now days. i want to mention this about lung shots from my rifle 257 Weatherby Mag. and my handload`s if a bigger whitetail buck is within 200 yards and when i pull the trigger that Nosler Partition bullet goes thru his lungs and some of lungs go out the opposite side 10-20 feet on the ground ,those bucks hump up and fall over, i don`t think a 223 does that unless maybe its a little deer real close ??

When I shot a lot of deer with rifles, over the years since 1960 I typically shot about 1/3 CNS. I have never worried about how far a deer traveled after I shot it other than the PITA of having to find one. If I did my part when I shot them in the body the heart and/or lungs were wrecked and I would find it where I found it if it ran. Sometimes they don't run. Sometimes they run a long ways. Most time they bleed well. Sometimes they do not bleed at all. I have learned that over the years and a lot of deer there is no way to predict for me what will occur after the shot be it with a bow or with a rifle. Whether they bleed well or none at all I found to be completely unpredictable. Cup and core bullets were neither nor nor less predictable than monos. Every single mono I have shot a deer with has exited.. I never kept records, but I would guess that 1 of 4 cup and cores failed to exit Might be as few as 1 in 6, pretty sure it wasn't much more than 1 in 4. Mainly Core-Lokts, a few each Speers/Sierras/Hornady/Noslers and odd things like the early Barnes and Partitions. Lots of different calibers and rifles. Most of the shots I have killed deer with have wrecked the heart and/or lungs. The most damages is fairly typically red soup lungs and/or hamburger heart. When that happens, Bambi usually runs. I have seen heart shot deer manage 100 yards or so. The most remarkable was a bow shot doe that was double lunged with a large 4 blade head that made it just over a mile. I had a doe that the heart was loose in the chest make it just over 200 yards. I had a sixer buck that was a classic double lung right behind the shoulder manage 200 yards and lay down and not die right there. He got up after I walked up on him in the dark and made it another 200 yards but he quit bleeding entirely for the last 100. I believe he just ran out of blood rather than plug up because he had great difficulty with that last 100 yards. I cannot control how far a given deer will travel after the shot. That is beyond my influence if I have selected properly before hand.

Damage to the deer does not translate to shortened distance run until I have gotten to over kill which has only been accompanied by a lot of meat damage which is neither desirable for me nor all that predictable bullet to bullet although certain bullets like the old Remington bronze points tended to wreck a lot of everything but penetrated unpredictably.

Monos are the most predictable by far of any bullets I use. I have seen zero stop in a deer. I have seen zero deflect significantly and only a very few deflect enough that I noticed. Not all of the cup and core irregularities that I have seen were fired by me, but I have seen them make impressively nasty holes in the chest and Bambi still made it a few hundred yards. I have seen cup and core bullets deflect off a rib and then slide around under the hide and stop without entering the chest and Bambi was only recovered because of another bullet not necessarily fired by the same shooter. I have personally had that happen a few times, the last of which was a Hornady Flextip 160 grain fired out of a 30-30 at ~2600 FPS out of a 30-30 at <50 feet. That bullet deflected off a rib when it should have penetrated the chest and exited in front of the opposite shoulder, wrecking the heart and lungs in transit. Instead, it deflected up forward it slid under the hide and passed through the back strap which did not noticeably inconvenience the fawn. That was a fawn I was chasing down that was wounded by another hunter and it managed a couple hundred more yards before I put one through it's brain stem. That was about ten years ago and the last cup and core bullet I have fired at a deer. I described monos as best because the kill very predictably, and well more than fast enough. I tolerate my equipment failing me very poorly. I do not balance a failure like the fawn against some number of good performances because the next shot is i in doubt once I know the bullet or rifle may fail me. I have always hated using something I do not trust

Heavy for caliber cup and core bullets at modest speeds used with the correct caliber for the task are extremely dependable IMO! I used to use bullets in the 180 grain range up to 405 years ago. My guess is that in your vast experience there was a lot of mismatching and guessing going on and for far to long at the expense of critters. It seems rather than reiterate your vast experience with cup and cores you have for the most part stated your inexperience and misuse of the bullets IMO






Trystan

Lighter framed animals definitely seem to succumb to shock. It may have been Ross Segfried but in one of the older Nosler reloading manuals his comment was that the 378 Weatherby was one of the most reliable killers for lion as it left lion clockworks on the ground. Some study in Virginia or around there came to the conclusion that the 25s were the fastest killer on deer. I bet the the 25 Roy had something to do with that. On true big game caliber does seem to matter. Pondoro Taylor thought that even buffalo reacted to bullet shock and for this reason he used the 270 Kynoch over the 300. But he also showed with his KO theory that the bigger the bullet the longer an elephant was stunned by a head shot that went off it's mark. The Swedish Moose study showed almost no difference between a 6.5x55 and a .358 Norma. But moose have been described as phlegmatic and they don't react much to the shot many times. Also because of the dense forests and hunting with hounds most of the shots were close range. The game taken was predominantly calves (yearlings) and cows due to the strict management practices in Sweden.

In general faster bullets seem to kill quicker and it is not until you get to 40-45+ calibers do the slow bullets catch up for quick kills. I am sure this has to do with primary and secondary wound channels but have no idea how to determine this even though there have been many attempts to do so by the military and ammunition makers.

a deer shot in the lungs or rib cage there is no meat loss on a large deer. myself i don`t want my freezer full of deer meat because i want deer to grow ,so my family and other hunters can have a deer to shoot in the future. people who shoot alot of small deer every year and brag about it are nothing more than game hogs and idiots ! deer culling is a different deal all together than just buying cheap doe deer tags in Minnesota

Trystan, You have no fugging idea what you are talking about. The standard deer hunting load here has bee 170-220 grain bullets in a jam-o-matic for a very long time. It was not until very recently that we even had something like light bullets with sturdy enough construction to worry much about other than a Partition.

"Heavy for caliber bullets at modest speeds" Ha! Until you get into big magnums the is nothing but modest speed available. Many of those bullets were also in fact fairly fragile compared to what we have available now. 180 grain 30 caliber bullets commonly shed cores and did not exit.

I tried a lot of things. I tested every single one of them decently before I shot deer with them and I began that practice when I was 8 years old under the guidance of a person who taught me a lot. What did not get tested was factory ammunition bought for rifles I did not have dies for by people who handed me a rifle and told me to shoot it.

I shot and killed a lot of deer with cup and core bullets that were often enough unsatisfactory because there was nothing else available and we really had precious little available until post 2000. The whole reloading scene in the late 50s and through the 80s had pathetic choice for good reliable bullets. It is no accident that the Core-Lokt is a benchmark of sorts. It was one of a few predictable bullets and at that, shooting a deer up close was not the best of ideas using them.

You puppies have no comprehension of how good we have it in terms of bullets today.

One in the middle is adequate for deer.

👍

I saw quite a few 223s in Alaska, it was a favorite for seals but used on everything else too.

What about the one to the right? Merriam's Elk and quite a few other animals were shot out with puny black powder 25-35 and 30-30 loads that people would not use for deer now days much less elk.

It is a .56 caliber of 900 grains. Plinker bullet for the rifle that shoots it. Serious loads are 1,300 grains, a two piece swagged as is the .50 caliber of 850 grains beside it. Both are adequate for deer, elk or moose. And most anything else that walks on planet earth.

It's the one in back...

I think you need a heavy equipment operator's license for that one.